The Tributes: Chapter One
by cadoo22
Summary: Welcome to the 45th Hunger Games!
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

I wince as Simon tries to stop my stomach from bleeding.

"This is really bad Treasa."

"Ow, what was that?" I scream, laying on the table while he tries to mend me.

"Sorry. A drop of my sweat fell into your cut."

"Gross Simon! You really need to get that nervous sweating thing under control!"

" And you really need to stop talking. Your voice isn't making anything any easier."

I roll my eyes at my best friend and continue to wince as he works his magic on my sliced open stomach. It felt like an eternity before he was finished cleaning and bandaging me.

"Six inches wide, two inches deep." Simon sighs as he angrily snaps off his gloves and tosses them in the trash. Slowly, I start to raise myself off his kitchen table. Luckily Simon's parents weren't home when I hobbled over here, blood running down my body.

"You care to tell me what happened?" When I don't answer right away he yells, "Treasa!"

"Why are you yelling at me? Do you think I sliced my own stomach or something? Ow!" Simon rushes over to me and helps me steady myself after I casually hopped off the table. I'm such an idiot.

"No of course I don't think you hurt yourself. What I meant was why did he do this to you?" Even without me saying that it was my father who cut me Simon knew.

"Well he's still convinced that I'm starving myself even though I stopped doing that a year ago. So….when I didn't finish my dinner…" **Slam!**

"I'm sick and fucking tired of him abusing you like you're some worthless…"

"Please don't finish that sentence, because anything you can possibly imagine to say I've been called by my family." My stomach pulsated with pain I couldn't ignore anymore. "Do you have any medicine?"

"Uh, no I don't sorry." Simon got off the table and paced in front of me racking his hands through his shoulder length brown hair. The pain in my stomach must be messing with my mind because I normally wouldn't ask Simon if he had medicine or anything that's fairly important. Everyone in District Two trains for the Hunger Games, well except Simon and his family. It shows in Simon's long gangly build, through his words, and through the fact that everyone in our District goes out of their way to disrupt Simon's family's life. The Games is more than just a game to us. It's honor, prestige, and power over everyone else. At least that's what my father tries to drill into my head.

"Do you want to pray with me?" I say walking over to him.

"I'm tired of calling on God and only getting his answering machine." Simon says. I look up into his honest hazel eyes and take hold of his hands.

"He hears us. I know, I can feel it in my soul when I talk to him. Just, don't loose faith okay?"

"I won't." He says looking down at me with those eyes that scare me into thinking he might like me more than he's supposed to.

"God, I thank you for today, I thank you for Simon, and our friendship that I feel can flatten these mountains that imprison us. We pray that you will keep us strong through these weeks leading up to the reaping. And in Jesus' name we pray, Amen."

"Amen. Do you want to sleep here tonight?" I'll catch hell if I'm not at morning exercise, but I'm not sure I can walk all the way to Victor's Village in the snow tonight.

"No, I better head back." I say as I carefully shrug my white coat, stained with my blood, on.

"Treasa you can't…"

"Miss my morning exercise or my father will do more than cut my stomach open. Yeah I know." I interrupt. "I'll see you tomorrow hopefully." When I make a decision I stick to it and Simon knows that, so instead of arguing with me further Simon watches me leave out the door.

The snow is worse than I thought. I keep tripping, which further injures my stomach, and I can barely see. Fear starts to settle in at the thought of dying out here in this blizzard.

_Whip!_

"Ah!" I breathe heavily and turn the other way, my hands stretch out trying to feel where I'm going.

_Wham!_

I pull my hands in quickly after the blow I took to them.

"_You're not concentrating Treasa! Stop and take a breath."_

"_Maybe if I could take off the blindfold…"_

"_You don't need to see! I know you can find your way. I know you can."_

I take a deep breath and remember the lesson my father taught me.

I start to walk.

Every time I feel like I'm going in the wrong direction I feel the sting from my father's whip.

An hour, maybe two.

I open the door as quickly as I could with frozen hands. Relieved to see no one there I sneak up to my room. After changing into the warmest pajamas I own I curl under the covers.

"God, please help all of the people that don't live in Victor's Village stay warm tonight. And please help us to keep our minds off the inevitable reaping coming up soon, Amen." I lie on my back and try not to move so that I don't irritate the stitches Simon gave me. Ignoring the pain as best as I can I let the exhaustion and the thought of walking on Heaven's shores drift me off to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

"You know he's from the Capitol," my younger sister Calista whispered and she sat down next to me on the front step. "How does it feel to know your father lives in the Capitol?"

"We don't know that for a fact, Cal." I was hardly listening to her as I stared down the street waiting for my best friend Quaid to arrive. What was taking him so long?

"Yes we do! I do! Mom told me!"

"Why would mom tell you that and not me?"

"She doesn't know how to tell you Ry. It took sixteen years for her to tell you that my dad isn't your real father."

"Sage is my father just as much as he is yours!" I jerked my head towards her and stood up to run. I hardly ever snap at any of my sisters, but Calista was really hitting a nerve. I just found out that the man that had helped my mother raise me wasn't my real father. At first, I really thought my mother was joking when she told me. I even laughed, but my smile faded when I noticed that the sad look remained on her face. I don't know why she waited until my sixteenth birthday to tell me, but it was definitely the worst birthday present ever.

It didn't take me long to meet up with Quaid. He was surprised to see me running down the street towards him, so he just stopped. I wanted so badly to tell him the life changing news that I just received, but he clearly had bigger problems of his own. I didn't intend for my jaw to drop when I caught sight of him, but I couldn't help it. His face was covered in blood and bruises, both of his eyes blackened, and the back of his shirt had long slits in it, revealing bright red welts and drops of blood. He looked up at me with a helpless look and just dropped to his knees.

"My God, what the hell happened to you?" I hardly even recognized my best friend. "Quaid! Answer me! Who did this to you?"

"P…pe…" he struggled to get the words out. He desperately needed medical attention; I could get answers later. The howl of pain he let out when I lifted him into my arms frightened me, but it was the only way. He was fairly easy for me to carry. Quaid and I are almost complete opposites. He's skinnier and shorter than I am, but I guess I'm pretty tall for my age. We also have really different personalities. I've always been really into school and fitness, but Quaid could care less about either one. He's really big on pranking others and experimenting with things that he knows he shouldn't.

"I'm taking you to Mrs. Dean," I told him calmly. I couldn't let him see the fear that was raging through my body. "She'll know what to do." Like I expected, he didn't reply. He just closed his eyes as I kept reassuring him that everything would be okay.

Mrs. Dean is an old woman that lives next door to me. Her husband died a few years ago, and since then she has dedicated her life to helping others. It always amazes me how calm she is, no matter how horrible the injuries and diseases she sees are. She seemed really surprised to see me standing on her front porch holding Quaid, but she immediately snapped out of it and into doctor mode. She guided me into her kitchen and had me place him on her table. Normally, she told me she'd have me put him on her designated patient bed, but she feared the cotton sheets would irritate the wounds on his back. After Quaid could no longer handle the pain and passed out, Mrs. Dean told me that was our chance.

"Alright, we have to hurry now sweetie. First, I need to pop his nose back into place. It's definitely broken. Take that towel over there and dip it into the water bucket. I need you to wash the blood off of his face." She grabbed a pair of scissors and began to cut off his shirt. "Does his family know?"

"No, I don't think so. They would have brought him to you themselves."

"So they didn't do this?"

"Not like this," I hesitated. Before his father left the family, Quaid would show up at my house late at night covered in bruises. His dad left when we were fourteen though, leaving just Quaid, his older twin brother and sister, and their mom. "No, they didn't do this."

"You know, it's almost time for the Hunger Games. Maybe he was training. Those trainers take it very seriously."

"No, he wouldn't. He's convinced he'll never be picked."

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe he has just as much of a chance as the rest of us. He's a really unlucky guy though, if you couldn't tell. I'm the lucky one of the two of us. At least…I used to be."

"Is everything okay, Ryken?"

"Yeah, just…family stuff."

"Will you clean his other cuts now? Do everything except his back, we'll get that later. You can rinse the towel in the bucket." I tried not to watch as she attempted to straighten his crooked nose. As bad as I felt for Quaid, I was so glad it wasn't me. I couldn't imagine who would want to do something like this to him

I watched Mrs. Dean as she put Vaseline on his welts and stitched up the deepest of his cuts. He was a bit easier to recognize with all of the blood washed off, but he was still in pretty bad shape.

"He's waking up," Mrs. Dean whispered. "He's going to be in a lot of pain for a while. I don't have any medicine, I'm really sorry. Soon I will, but not now." She looked really unsure of her last statement, but I didn't bother asking her about it. She obviously wasn't going to explain it to me. "Quaid? Honey, can you hear me? It's Mrs. Dean. Ryken's here too."

"How are you feeling buddy?" His eyes were still really swollen, so it was hard to tell if he was opening them or not.

"Ry," he managed to say. "It…hurts."

"I know man, I know." I grabbed his hand. "Listen, I really need you to tell me who did this to you."

I felt Quaid's hand grip mine really hard as he muttered, "Peacekeepers."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 2

"Peacekeepers? Oh God, Quaid, what did you do this time?" I felt him grip my hand tighter. "Quaid? Answer me."

"F…fireworks" he struggled. I heard Mrs. Dean sigh beside me. I knew without even having to look that she was rolling her eyes as far back into her head as they would go. She would often warn my mother and me about what a bad influence Quaid and his entire family were. Mr. Dean and Quaid's dad would often have many quarrels in the past, usually over silly things, and Mrs. Dean was convinced that Quaid would follow in the footsteps of his abusive, manipulative, and arrogant father. The arrogant part did have some truth to it, but nobody in the world knows Quaid better than I do, and I know for a fact that his number one goal in life is to be exactly opposite of his father.

"Dammit Quaid, how many warnings did you think you were going to get away with before they finally did something about you?" I sat down on a chair beside the table and covered my face with my hands. _What the HELL am I going to do with this kid?_

"You don't understand," I looked up and noticed a grin starting to appear on his face. "I accidently hit one of them…burned up his leg pretty bad." He gently propped himself up on one elbow so he could face me better. The last part made his grin grow as large as his swollen, beat up face would allow. He and I both knew it was no 'accident', but I chose not to say anything in the case that Mrs. Dean hadn't picked up on it. "Let's just say he…well, he didn't take it well."

"I'll say," I didn't really know what else to say to my best friend. I cared for him a great deal and it hurt more than he would ever understand to watch him do these things to himself. While this was the worst I had ever seen, he did often drop by my house with some pretty nasty wounds, even after his dad left the family and it was always my responsibility to take him over to see Mrs. Dean.

"Sorry to rush off, but I've got some errands to run." Mrs. Dean said, grabbing her jacket. I had the feeling she was going to try to hunt down some medicine for Quaid. As much as she despised his pranks, I knew she truly did care and worry about him. We all worry about him. "As always, feel free to stay as long as you'd like. Cookies are in the jar as always." We absolutely adored her homemade chocolate chip cookies and she never seemed to fail to have some made every time we came over, which, with Quaid and his shenanigans, was quite a bit. "And make sure to lock up when you leave, Ryken." And then she was gone. She reminded me of this every single time, as if I had forgotten after the first ten or twenty times.

"Quaid, there's something I really need to tell you, but if you're not up for it right now it can wait." I headed over to the cookie jar and grabbed a couple out for each of us.

"Oh boy, I love story time!" he tried to pull himself completely up, but it clearly hurt too much because he ended up laying back down and slightly turned his body towards me as I sat back down. "It's bad news though, that's a fact, otherwise you wouldn't have even suggested waiting to tell me. What's up?"

"I learned something…interesting today. Interesting in the not good sort of way."

"Go on…"

"Well, apparently…my dad…I mean, Sage…isn't really my dad. I mean, he's my dad in the sense that he raised me, but biologically I am nothing to him. And to make it feel oh so much better, it's apparently just me. All of my sisters are his. He and my mom got together when I was just a baby."

"Are you kidding me? I always _knew _you never looked like Sage!" Unfortunately, this wasn't one of Quaid's pretend '_oh I've known the whole time when no one else did_' bits. He really had always joked with me that there was no way I wasn't adopted because I really didn't look like either one of my parents. I'm willing to bet, even though he'd never admit it, that he was just tickled to find out he was right the whole time. "So who _is _your dad?"

"That's the thing, Mom refuses to tell me. I guess she's afraid of hurting me or something. Calista says he lives in the Capitol." The thought of it gave me the chills. I absolutely loathed the Capitol and everyone associated with it.

"Oh, what does she know about it?" He, like most of the people living in the districts, shared the same hatred towards the Capitol.

"She claims my mom told her," I shrugged. "But the sad part is, I think I might actually believe it. He obviously doesn't live in District 7, anyway, that never would have worked out."

"Well, what a way to kick a guy when he's down. 'Hey son, I just wanted you to know that I've been lying to you about your father for sixteen years now and OH yeah, by the way, he's from the Capitol'. Sheesh. I'm sorry man."

"What really gets me is, what the Hell was my mom doing with someone from the Capitol? I can't even go around trying to find a guy that looks like me with the way they're all painted up and crap over there, even if I could find a way to get there…without my family.".

"Yeah, and it could really be anyone. Oh my god! What if it's the president?" This idea got him sitting up in a hurry.

"Quaid, I can tell you right now, the president is _not _my father. And in any case, I'm not really sure I want to know who my real father is anyway, especially if he's from the Capitol. As far as I am concerned, Sage _is _my real dad. He's the only one that's been there for me, as long as I can remember. Right now, I really just need to focus on the reaping and so do you; not attempting to blow up our Peacekeepers."

"Do you _really _not want to know who your real father is?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Dammit Quaid," I placed my face in my hands again, ashamed. My best friend knew me better than I knew myself. Warm tears began to roll down my face for the first time since I received the bad news and my muffled voice blurted out, "Of course I want to know who my real father is."


End file.
